Microvi’s Wastewater Technology Reduces Ammonia, Nitrate

A third-party evaluation conducted by the Johns Hopkins University/MWH Alliance has demonstrated that Microvi Biotechnologies’ innovative biocatalytic technologies for nitrification and denitrification are effective in treating wastewater for nitrogen removal.

The study was performed at the Alliance laboratory, which is housed at the Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study evaluated Microvi’s MB-WWT and MB-N2 biocatalyst technologies in treating wastewater that contained ammonia and nitrate.

Results showed that Microvi’s biocatalyst technologies substantially reduced ammonia and nitrate in the water at lower treatment times than many conventional methods, with a reduced secondary waste stream.

MB-N2 uses novel biocatalysts to convert nitrate in water to nitrogen gas, a harmless byproduct, safely and efficiently, the company says. The MB-N2 technology is the first to degrade nitrate in water without producing a secondary waste stream and has lower treatment times and higher removal efficiencies than conventional systems.

Microvi’s MB-WWT technology is a low cost, small-footprint system that effectively removes pollutants such as ammonia (NH4+) by completely degrading it into harmless products (N2 and H2O) by a special population of organisms as part of the MB-WWT biocatalysts, the company says.

New technologies using passive aeration and process control dramatically improve wastewater treatment, according to a Lux Research report published earlier this year.

This is a great example of technology solving a problem that shouldn’t exist. Why are we not using this nitrate tainted water on our farms, golf courses, yards, etc? Seems rather stupid to treat the water to remove nitrates (fertilizer) then use natural gas to pull nitrogen from the air to produce nitrates to fertilize our vegetation. Why not treat the water to remove heavy metals and other contaminants then recycle the water?

It’s not quite that simple, Russ. Nitrates are in too high a concentration in many municipal water system to be used by the population, however, it is also usually the case that the water is not high enough in nitrates to provide a nutritional benefit for application as a fertilizer. The same principal is present in regards to phosphate. Too much in the water, which spurs algal growth, and thus causes hypoxia, etc., but not enough to just spray on crops or soil to significantly impact plants nutritionally.